The Dogmas of Social Morality Versus the Esoteric Spiritual
Teaching That Is At the Origin of Traditional Religions

1.

The principal Scripture (or holy book) of the tradition of the
Western world is the “New Testament”. The “New Testament” communicates
principles and ideas and beliefs that, more than those communicated by any other
book, are responsible for conventional Western ideas about religion and
Spiritual life. Although Western culture includes religious traditions other
than Christianity, the dominant religious text which, in the West, tends to
inform all popular notions about religion and Spirituality is the “New
Testament”.

If you grew up in the Western (and predominantly Christian)
cultural sphere, you are perhaps influenced by the “New Testament” more than by
any other religious book. Even if you are not very familiar with the “New
Testament”, you have (nevertheless) been impressed, over the years, with certain
conventions of religious presumption of which the “New Testament” is the source.
The conceptions associated with the traditional interpretation of the “New
Testament” are not only part of the religious teaching of Christian churches,
but part of Western culture in general. Through your schooling, through your
childhood religious training, and through the influence of those with whom you
were associated as a child—even though they might not have spoken of
religion—you have been greatly influenced by these conceptions, some of which
are directly communicated in the “New Testament” itself and others of which are
simply traditions that are, by extension, associated with “New Testament”
religion.

Everyone is dominated, to one or another degree, by
conceptions of life that have their origin in exoteric religious culture. Even
though scientism (or scientific materialism) is tending to displace exoteric
religion as a way of knowing, exoteric religion still tends to be the basis for
present-day morality and social conceptions. In fact, exoteric religion has
traditionally always been associated with moral and social conceptions.

Thus, if
you are, by birth, a Westerner, and even if you were not brought up as a
Christian, you have, since your birth, experienced propaganda that is, at least
in its origins, both conventionally religious and specifically Christian. And
the basic intention of all such conventionally religious propaganda has been to
convince you—and, thus, the collective of everyone—that certain kinds of
behaviors are appropriate and other kinds of behaviors are not appropriate.

Every present-day legal system—and even the entire body of
social contracts by which people are related in their daily lives—has its
justification in the tradition of exoteric religion. Therefore, in a time when
the legitimacy of exoteric religion as a way of knowing is being undermined by
scientism, so (likewise) is the political and social order simultaneously being
undermined by scientism. This is not only a time when individuals are moving
from exoteric (and, thus, collectively enforced) religious ways of knowing
towards materialistic and secular and even individualistic ways of knowing, but
this is also a time when society as a whole is becoming corrupted and made
chaotic by those same tendencies—and, therefore, new political forces are
arising in immediate coincidence with the new cultural forces.

Human beings are more and more impinged upon by the forces of
political materialism—while, at the same time, they are impinged upon culturally
by the forces of scientific materialism. The way of knowing in a culture cannot
be changed unless the way of keeping order is changed at the same time—and
Western society has kept order for many centuries through exoteric religious
belief, exoteric religious presumptions, and exoteric religious conventions of
behavior.

If, all of a sudden, exoteric religion is “discovered” to be
untrue, and if, as a replacement for the “point of view” of exoteric religion,
the “point of view” communicated through scientific materialism dominates the
present culture, then the traditional justifications for so-called “moral”
behavior have, as a consequence, been abandoned—and not yet replaced with a
viable public alternative. Therefore, how will the necessary public order be
maintained? A new political force is, under the circumstances, required, to
replace the moral programs of exoteric religion. Thus, all kinds of political
idealisms arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—revolutionary ideas,
communistic ideas, egalitarian ideas, socialistic ideas, capitalistic ideas, all
kinds of political experimenting—the basic purpose of which is to keep people in
order, to keep material production going, to maintain public peace, to make life
somehow acceptable to the people—so the people will not rise in revolt, or go
mad, or create chaos.

The rise of new political idealisms is coinciding with the new
cultural circumstance, and not only is all of this dominant in the West but it
is, likewise, dominant all over the everywhere-“Westernized” world (East and
West). This change in the orientation of the mind of humankind has gradually
been developing since the Renaissance era in Western (European) culture. The
conventions of human orientation began to change in the period of the Western
Renaissance—from a sacred orientation to an orientation to the human individual,
from Deity-centeredness to ego-centeredness, from ecstasy and sainthood to
“Narcissism” and ego-possession, from sacred culture to secular culture, from a
dominantly right-brained culture to a now dominantly left-brained culture.

As this transformation has occurred in the world, the ancient
cultural supports have lost their legitimacy. This does not mean that the
ancient exoteric religious cultural supports did not have anything to do with
what is right. Those exoteric religious supports were, in a rudimentary (and
Reality-“objectifying”) sense, based upon the general (and, in principle, right
and positive) intention to make life sacred. It is simply that the ancient
exoteric modes of the “objectification” of Reality have (themselves) now—and
rightly—lost their legitimacy in people’s minds. However, as a result of that
change of mind, the principle of the “sacred” (or of the understanding and
managing of life based upon the intrinsic Truth of universal prior unity) has
also—and not at all rightly—been lost.

A way of thinking that had only secondary importance in the
ancient world has now become dominant. Human-centeredness has become the
acceptable convention of mind. Human knowing is now devoted to analytical
reductionism, or the process of reducing everything to the individual human
being, to human processes, to humankind in the lowest, most rudimentary—or material—sense. Many social and cultural enterprises remain
valuable, with the potential to improve the condition of humanity, yet a
profoundly destructive (materialistic, analytical, disunitary, and anti-sacral)
philosophical enterprise is also operative at the same time. It is this latter
development that I Criticize.

Science as a conditional method of enquiry, as an effective
practical method of investigation for the sake of acquiring natural knowledge
(and subsequent power to control natural conditions of existence) is, obviously,
legitimate. Yet, science, from the beginning, has also (and otherwise) been
associated with the ego-centered orientation (and, thus, with the fixed “point
of view” perspective) and, altogether, with the ancient (conventional and naive)
philosophy of materialism—and it has, on that basis, also, been associated with
the arising of co-emerging political movements.

Present-day humankind is being
both culturally and politically controlled—not only by science itself (which has
an inherent, but also inherently limited, legitimacy), but also by the
philosophy of materialism (which is inherently ignorant, gross, merely
analytical, de-constructive, reductionistic, exclusivistic, and naively
oppressive). And, as science and the philosophy of materialism progressively
exclude all other forms of knowing, human beings are becoming more and more
dominated by political materialism—or the forces that are keeping order
independent of sacred (or unitive) consciousness and authority.

This is not to say that the cultural means whereby order was
kept in the past were entirely benign. Exoteric religious “authority” is not
necessarily (or even characteristically) associated with anything that has
remotely to do with the Truth, or with Reality Itself, or with Divine
Self-Realization, or even with the transcending of egoity.

In the Western world particularly, the institutional (or
corporate) “authority” of the exoteric Christian Church has been the principal
means whereby the State creates political and social order. Now that the State
is associated with scientific materialism and not with religious doctrine, the
State must find other means for creating order. Thus, the State is, generally
speaking, no longer basing its own (corporate) “authority” on the (corporate)
“authority” of the “official” Church. And, for the most part (even though some
still cling, nostalgically, to the “old days”, of obedience to corporate
exoteric religious “authority”), people are no longer politically and socially
controlled (or, otherwise, willing to be controlled) by exoteric religious
“authority”—at least, not sufficiently to keep order.

In its origins, what later became institutionalized (or
corporate, and “official”) “Christianity” was a small cult (or sect) of cultural
“outsiders”, with its “inner circle” associated with an esoteric Spiritual
teaching. Outwardly, however, in its public preaching, even that essentially
esoteric sect was associated with more general religious and social
principles—and, through the process of that public preaching, people were
gradually brought into the inner core of the esoteric life of the sect. In the
early centuries of the Common Era, there were, everywhere, many sects which were
(fundamentally) esoteric sects—to one degree or another revolutionary (or of a
critical, or “outsider’s”, disposition) in relation to the religious exotericism
of the “official” religion of the public institutions and the then-current
political conventions of the State.

After about three centuries (by which time much of the
esoteric Spiritual basis of the original pre-“Christian” sect had been lost),
the Emperor (Constantine) engineered the cultural-historical shift that formally
established the dogmatic basis for the institutionalizing of an “official”
version of (exclusively exoteric) Christianity, and that eventually (within a
few decades) resulted in that exoteric institution of (thus dogmatically
defined) Christianity becoming the “official” religion of the Roman State. Since
that time, either “official” (exoteric) Christianity has functioned as an arm of
the State, or (otherwise) the State has, in some sense, functioned as an arm of
the “official” (exoteric) Christian Church. As centuries passed, the
relationship between Church and State changed—such that the exoteric Christian
Church now plays a remarkably different role, and is gradually being excluded,
having lost its previous presumed legitimacy and public “authority”.

However, the exoteric Christian Church’s loss of power in the
political and social realms is a relatively recent development. With the
original union between “official” Christianity and the State of Rome,
Christianity became the force whereby political and social order was developed
and maintained in the Western world. To maintain order (and not Truth) was its
function as an institution. Obviously, such an institution is not intended to be
communicating esoteric teachings to the masses—since esoteric communications are
intended to serve the higher, and greater, and (characteristically) Spiritual or
(otherwise) Transcendental purposes of Truth-Realization (in the case of,
necessarily, more mature people, who have already out-grown the boundaries of
merely exoteric, or public, “schooling”).

Because esoteric teachings take off
where exoteric teachings have come to a developmental end, esoteric
communications do not tend to enforce political and social order. On the
contrary, esoteric (and, generally, ecstatic) teachings tend not to bringabout
a conventional political and social order—because esoteric teachings presume a
prior (or already achieved) state of order, at least within the heart and mind
and life of the individual esoteric practitioner.

As a case in point, Jesus of Galilee proclaimed an ecstatic,
esoteric Spiritual message. His message was not a program for bringing order to
politics and general society—nor was such order the purpose of the earliest
institutionalized Christians, who were purposed to religious devotion (and even
to mystical life), and who were, in any case, in no position to command the
State of Rome.

Because their guiding purpose was “not of this world” (and,
therefore, of no political use as a tool of social order), Rome regarded the
early Christians as enemies—and the early Christians were persecuted by the
State, as various other similarly “unusable” religious sects were. But when the
Christians eventually came into power as the “official authority”, those
features of Christianity that are oriented to the conventions of public (and
altogether exoteric) religion—the purpose of which is to maintain political and
social order—became the dominant communication of “official” Christianity.

When
that “officialdom” took hold of Christianity, its otherwise more esoteric
dimensions—which were the real (“inner-circle”) force at its origin—were
systematically eliminated, primarily because esoteric teachings have nothing to
do with managing either a great State or any kind of larger common social entity
(of ordinary, and, generally, immature, or only exoteric-ready, and not at all
esoteric-ready, people). A religion that is to be the “official” religion of a
great State (or even any larger common social entity) must be essentially
exoteric, and, thus, fundamentally oriented to maintaining social principles,
social morality, conventions of behavior that maintain political and social
order, and productive participation in work life, and positive participation in
the larger collective of “community” life, and, altogether, universal
subordination to the parent-like State (and to the parent-like “official”
State-religion) and, thus, universal conformity to the will of the hierarchical
political (and religious) “authority” (or “authority”-structure) of the time.

Therefore, the “New Testament” (and the tradition of
Christianity as a whole) must be seen in relation to both the esoteric sect from
which it arose and the exoteric institution that largely replaced it (and even
all esotericism) with the systematic exotericism of ordinary political and
social purposes that has, traditionally, been served by public corporate
religion in the Western world.

2.

The “New Testament” has a long history of interpretation. This
scripture is interpreted anew by every generation, in every time and place.
Consequently, the interpretations tend to reflect the mood, the state of mind,
or the leading (and generally characteristic) presumptions of the time.

However, as a general rule, all the traditional
interpretations of the “New Testament” tend to be oriented toward the
development of a politically defined social consciousness. Thus, it could be
said that, in terms of its most common traditional interpretation, the “New
Testament” is a social (rather than an esoteric Spiritual) gospel. The text of
the “New Testament” was originally compiled from (and, altogether, invented by)
a wide variety of sources, and it was constantly propagandistically transformed
over the centuries, always to represent a “point of view” (and a message) that
is predominantly social and political in nature.

The process of reducing the “New Testament” to a social gospel
began before institutional Christianity became the “official” religion of Rome.
The process was certainly intensified when exoteric Christianity became the
“official” religion (and “authoritative” religious corporation) of the State,
but even the process of gathering (and inventing) the early materials and making
a “New Testament” out of them began early on, as the Christian cult became more
and more conscious of its conventional social role—which is to keep order, to
inspire people to be civil in relation to one another, to function positively
and productively with one another, to live a conventionally moral life, and, on
that basis, to look forward to the cult’s “official” conception of rewards after
death.

Thus, even before it became an “official” Church corporation,
the cult (or newly emerging sect) of Christianity was becoming more and more the
servant of the ordinary social (or worldly) life of its members. As the
Christian sect acquired more members, assumed more responsibility, and had more
social order to create, it began to play the role of social enforcer more and
more exclusively. Thus, the newly emerging Christian culture more and more
embraced the very same limitations (of exoteric “official” religiosity) that
Jesus of Galilee had himself criticized.

Exoteric religion is primarily a communication that intends to
bring political and social order to the public world. Exoteric religion is
primarily a social gospel. Esoteric ecstatics, on the other hand, are very
difficult to control—in the usual (conventional) sense. It is virtually
impossible, for example, to interest ecstatics in being socially productive for
its own sake. Ecstatics generally value the practice of being civil in relation
to other people—but it is very difficult to get them to labor in factories and
bureaucratic business organizations merely for the sake of worldly success, or,
otherwise, to get them excited about the mundane purposes of a great State!

Therefore, exoteric religion tends to eliminate all aspects of religious
communication that suggest anything but how to be a productive and positive
social personality. To reinforce these qualities—and even to suppress ecstatic
qualities—is the guiding purpose of exoteric religion.

Even though Christianity is, in its origins, an esoteric
movement, it was reduced to an exclusively exoteric religion as it became more
expansive and eventually achieved the status of the “official” (or politically
enforced) State-religion of the West. Christianity thus became an exoteric (or
conventionally social) institution, and it reduced the teaching of Jesus of
Galilee to a social gospel. The result is that now everybody commonly assumes
that, since the “New Testament” is, historically, the primary religious
influence in the Western world, religion is supposed to be a social gospel, and
Jesus must (therefore) have taught a merely social gospel.

In this “late-time” (or “dark” epoch)—when even all cultures
are being moved toward the way-of-knowing represented by scientific materialism,
and all cultures are losing their sacred basis for order, and are tending to be
dominated (more and more) by the forces of political materialism—the
interpreters of the religious texts of cultures other than the culture of the
West are, likewise, moving more and more toward an exoteric interpretation of
esoteric teachings. India, for example, has, since the later nineteenth century,
been experiencing a kind of renaissance of Hinduism.

The Bhagavad Gita is a
principal text in this movement in India—and one of the dominant tendencies of
current interpretation conceives the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita as a kind of
social gospel. In other words, the Bhagavad Gita is, now, publicly interpreted
as a source of exoteric instruction about how to live the way of “good works”,
rather than the mystically interiorized esoteric way of life that is
characteristic of traditional Indian Spirituality.

Thus, the Bhagavad
Gita—which, in its origins, is an esoteric teaching about Spiritual and
Transcendental Realization—is being used, more and more, to support a cultural,
political, and social movement of an exoteric kind. In this manner of religious
interpretation within the Indian cultural sphere, the Bhagavad Gita is being
interpreted (and, thus, used) in a manner that is very similar to the
traditional exoteric interpretation (and even the earliest exoteric inventing)
of the “New Testament” in the West.

To the degree that they are religious at all, people all over
the world now commonly conceive of religion as a kind of social message. It is
commonly presumed that religion is reducible to a kind of humanism—even a kind
of atheistic humanism (or a humanity-centered, rather than Deity-centered,
positive social life)—or, at least, that religion is totally compatible with the
world-oriented, humanity-oriented, socially-oriented propaganda of the time.

You are constantly “TV’d” into the presumption that you are
born for the sake of being born, that you are born into this world for the sake
of this world. The presumption conveyed by TV (or the pervasive conventional
mentality) is that life is an end-in-itself, and one is supposed to be
enthusiastically involved with things of this world. Luckily (so the usual
person presumes), there is science, technology, and a certain amount of
freedom—and, therefore, it is possible to be rightly enthusiastic about
conditional existence.

People have a great deal of hope that, during their
lifetime, they will achieve more and more pleasure, leisure, and fulfillment of
their human functions. All over the world now, everyone is being propagandized
into social consciousness, the positive social gospel that is now coming from
the realms of scientific materialism and its political arms around the world. If
current secularizing trends continue, sacred texts such as the “New Testament”
and the Bhagavad Gita are in danger of becoming obsolete. If that occurs, then
positive and enthusiastic social principles or ideals will, more and more, be
communicated all over the world completely independent of any kind of religious
“authority”—and, of course, entirely removed from any kind of esoteric
teachings.

However, it is important to understand that the teachers and
the teachings that are at the origins of the true scriptures of humankind (and
of the various cultural movements associated with those scriptures) are not of
an exoteric nature. Those teachers and teachings were not about the social
gospel which the State has traditionally looked to religion to generate. If you
understand the real fundamental (and esoteric) teaching underlying the “New
Testament” and other traditional scriptures, you will see that those scriptures
are not exoteric social gospels at all. Rather, those scriptures are esoteric
communications about transcending the egoic self and the world and Realizing
True Communion (and, ultimately, egoless Self-Identification) with the Divine
Condition of Reality.

The social gospel—and the socially positive “point of view”
that the State wants to generate and to support by various means—is not at all
about transcending the world by Realizing the Divine Condition of Reality.
Likewise, that social gospel is not about transcending the apparently individual
self by self-sacrifice in the Divine Condition of Reality.

The State is purposed
to have people transcend their otherwise egoic (or even “Godward” and ecstatic)
inclinations by means of productive work. In other words, the State likes the
ideal of individuals who are “transcending themselves” by being devoted to the
purposes of the State. The State generally tolerates the large-scale
communication of religion only if the message is exoteric (or socially
oriented). The ideal must lead the common individual to be a “good” social
personality—doing his or her job, being honest, not making trouble, not creating
disorder, not being lazy.

The State is not interested in any kind of teaching about
transcending the egoic self and the world in Communion with the Divine Condition
of Reality. The State is not at all in that business, nor does the State like
such teachings. The State—and its “official” cult of the time—did not like Jesus
of Galilee.

One could say that present-day “official” Christianity also does not
like Jesus of Galilee—and for the same reason. The “official” Church has never
liked the ecstatic Jesus, who taught everyone to be an ecstatic, like himself,
and so to transcend the selfish self and the world (or the “flesh”) in the
Spiritual Divine. Nobody has ever really liked Jesus of Galilee, except those
people who are able to respond to the Truth in Spiritual terms. Such people have
always been relatively rare.

3.

If you are truly Spiritually Awakened, then you inherently
transcend the apparently separate self and the apparently objective world—in
every moment. Even if the machine of the body-mind is active in one or another
manner—as it inevitably is, because it is born in the frame of space and time—no
action need bind you in any manner whatsoever, if you will rightly understand
the nature of the body-mind and the world, and if you will practice life on the
basis of that right understanding.

This is the logic of the teaching of Jesus of Galilee, and
(indeed) the logic of the teaching of all the great Spiritual Adepts. The great
Spiritual Adepts do not come into the world merely to guarantee social order,
nor can their teachings be reduced to a social gospel. The teachings of Jesus of
Galilee are not reducible to the “Ten Commandments” and some sort of socially
positive emotion that is called “love”.

The conception of “works”—or performing action for the sake of
becoming holy, “sinless”, deserving of heaven after death, happiness, fullness,
success while alive—is discussed in the “New Testament”, just as it is discussed
in the Bhagavad Gita and other traditional scriptures. If you understand the
esotericism represented by such figures as Jesus and Krishna (or by the
essential teaching communicated by the texts in which such figures are the
principal characters), you will see that no traditional scripture recommends the
way of the social-personality-for-its-own-sake.

In other words, no true
traditional scripture is a merely social gospel, or a gospel that (ultimately)
is merely a justification for a positive social personality whose “salvation”
lies in “works”, or the cultivation of positive behaviors. In fact, the
traditional scriptures (such as the “New Testament” and the Bhagavad Gita) all
teach the transcending of bondage to “works”, the transcending of the necessity
(and the effects) of all ordinary action.

The society of the Jews at the time of Jesus of Galilee was
“officially” based on exoteric religious laws. The Mosaic law, or the “Ten
Commandments”, was preeminent—but there were also all kinds of other
laws—including laws of the temple, as well as many and various
forms of conventional religious belief and social morality that were propagated
by the various sects among the Jews.

The Judaic laws were, first of all, forms
of intentional action, or causes that produced culturally acceptable effects.
You were instructed about actions that were appropriate for you in your
station—actions that would produce positive results. These became the laws, the
conventions of social morality, the behavioral rules and the systems of behavior
and action and idealism that were associated with each of the social classes (or
states of life, birth, and social status).

Jesus of Galilee was teaching Jewish people, in the context of
a society founded on the observance of a sacred system of laws. In that social
context, it was assumed that, in general, people were going to act according to
the laws or conventions of behavior that were communicated in the sacred
culture. However, the great Spiritual teachers have always called people to
notice that the laws of sacred culture tend to be misused and
misapplied—becoming (thereby) the basis for bondage rather than Divine
Realization, and the basis for unhappiness and seeking rather than Spiritual
Happiness and Freedom.

Thus, the “New Testament” does not merely teach the
Mosaic laws, or even a new and summary principle of social morality that could
be called “love”. In other words, the “New Testament” is not merely teaching
social morality, via the idea of “love” as a general social concept. Nor is the
“New Testament” teaching the Law of love-in-this-world for the sake of this
world merely. Rather, the “New Testament”—at least in its underlying original
contents—is primarily teaching the esoteric Spiritual Mystery of the “Kingdom of
God” (or the “Divine domain”).

The fundamental teaching of Jesus of Galilee is about how to
enter, in every present moment, into the Spiritual Condition of the Divine
Reality, Which Is the Source-Condition (or Matrix) of conditional self and
conditional Nature—and such that there is the inherent transcending of all “sin”
(or all separation from the Divine Spiritual Condition of Reality, or all
bondage to mere causes and effects). Thus, the esoteric “method” (or the Way of
“right life”, rather than the corporate social and altogether exoteric religion)
that is the underlyingpractice recommended in the “New Testament” Gospels—and
in all true scripture—is the release of all clinging to separate self and world,
and the relinquishment of all seeking for results of any kind, by means of a
total bodily and lifetime submission to the “Spirit” (or “Pneuma”, or “Breath”)
That Is the Divine Reality. Jesus taught that, on the basis of alwayspresent
self-surrender into “Spirit-Breathing” Spiritual Communion with the Divine
Itself (or the Spiritual Reality-Condition That Is Inherently Divine), you
should live as if you have been completely forgiven, and as if there are no
binding necessities or unhappy obligations, and as if no “sin” is effective in
your life.

Thus, the fundamental principle underlying the “New Testament”
tradition is an esoteric principle. That principle is the always-present
transcending of conditional self and conditional world via ego-surrendering
Spiritual Communion with the Divine Condition of Reality. Most of the
institutional overlay of communication in the “New Testament” is
exoteric—socially oriented toward the world of public laws, the world of
ordinary purposive action, and the world of commonplace relations. Yet, if you
examine the gospel stories, you will find evidence, here and there, of the
underlying esotericism that is the root-teaching of Jesus of Galilee.

Perhaps the primary example (or demonstration) of the esoteric
activity of Jesus of Galilee is the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus (in
chapter three of the “Gospel of John”). I will quote this passage to you, from
the translation in The Jerusalem Bible:

There was one of the Pharisees called Nicodemus, a leading
Jew, who came to Jesus by night.

In other words, Nicodemus came secretly. He did not want to be
observed—because the “official” religion, like the State, is interested in
exoteric matters, which do not “stimulate” the populace, and which do not (by
any “distracting” means) deter ordinary people from being merely socially
positive personalities. Nicodemus could have gotten in trouble for coming to
Jesus, who was associated with a message other than the established dogma, for
coming to hear a mysterious message from a man who was doing mysterious things.

So, Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, and he said:

“Rabbi”—which is another word for “teacher”, or “Guru”,
in that setting—“we know that you are a teacher who comes from God; for no
one could perform the signs that you do unless God were with him.”

Jesus answered: “I tell you most solemnly, unless a man is
born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said, “How can a grown man be born? Can he go
back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

Jesus replied, “I tell you most solemnly, unless a man is
born through water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God: what
is born of the flesh is flesh; what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not
be surprised when I say: You must be born from above. The wind blows
wherever it pleases; you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes
from or where it is going. That is how it is with all who are born of the
Spirit.”

This quotation is one of the principal summaries of Jesus’
fundamental “point of view”. Jesus of Galilee tells Nicodemus the “secret
teaching”, the teaching one could hear from Jesus only in secret, the esoteric
teaching—not merely the public message that encourages everyone to be a more
positive social character. Nicodemus is receiving the “secret teaching” from
Jesus, the teaching for the “inner circle”.

What is the secret teaching about? It is about the Mystery of
the “Kingdom of God” (or the “Divine domain”)—and the “Kingdom of God” is
esoterically interpreted to mean a transformation of the individual from
existence in the “flesh” (or as an ego possessed by the conventional purposes of
this world) to existence in and as the Living, Eternal, and Free Divine Spirit.

The idea of the “Kingdom of God” already existed in Israel
before the reported time of Jesus of Galilee—but it was commonly conceived in
terms of a worldly destiny, and identified with a religious, social, and
political State corporation, primarily made up of the righteous believers among
the Jews. The Kingdom was to be created in this world by the “God” of the Jews
through a messiah, a Divine messenger, who would come into the world and conquer
all of the enemies of Israel and establish Israel in peace and fullness, wherein
all of the laws again produce pleasurable and good results.

Jesus of Galilee was reportedly teaching in a time when this
ideal, this prophecy of the “Kingdom of God”, was already present. In the
passage from the “New Testament” that I just quoted, Jesus is teaching a person
from the temple, Nicodemus, who knows very well about the prophecies of the
“Kingdom of God”.

Jesus is saying that the “Kingdom of God”, or the “Divine
domain”, is not of this world. It is not externally evident in this world, and it is not to come in this world—except, perhaps, as a natural
expression of the Spiritual Awakening of humankind as a whole. The “Kingdom of
God” is a Mystery about being “born”—or Awakened—into a state of Oneness with
the Divine Spirit-Breath. You can be born again in the Spirit, even though you
have already been born in the flesh. And that which is born (or Awakened) in the
Spirit is Spirit Itself.

Thus, the esoteric teaching of Jesus of Galilee is that you
must become the Divine Spirit-Breath. In other words, you must become That Which
Is Divine. You must enter into the Domain, the Condition, the “Kingdom”, of the
Divine—in this present moment. That is the process, the Mystery, whereby a
person can Realize the Truth that Jesus came to teach.

He did not teach about a
worldly kingdom that he would establish as a political messiah, either now or in the future. Jesus is not coming again in order to be
the political messiah—he did not come the first time in order to be a political
messiah! The teaching of Jesus is specifically about the transcending of that
expectation. Jesus taught about the “Kingdom of God” as an esoteric Spiritual
Mystery, not as a convention of worldly seeking.

Now, it is true that, if everyone did Spiritually enter into
the “Kingdom of God”, then, as time went on, as history developed, the Divine
Spirit would be more and more effective—and, eventually, perhaps something like
a non-utopian Divine Kingdom on Earth might appear. That possibility is, indeed,
latent in such instruction. Nevertheless, Jesus’ “point of view” is definitely
that such a Kingdom will not come about by any means other than a right life of
Spiritual Communion with the Divine Condition of Reality.

Jesus is not merely
coming again to take over this failed world that refuses to be “born” in the
Spirit. The Spirit cannot take over from outside. The Spirit is effective in
this world only through the esoteric process of Spiritual Communion—not through
mere belief, but through worship of the Divine in Spirit, worship of the Divine
in Truth, until the “flesh” (or the conditional ego-self and its world) is
utterly transcended in Spiritual Fullness.

Jesus of Galilee was saying that the “Kingdom of God” is
Realizable—but not through social laws of any kind, and not through any
transformation or perfection of conventional behaviors. In any case (as Jesus
taught), the purpose of the “Kingdom of God” does not relate to this world.
Rather, the “Kingdom of God” is the Spiritual State of Utter Unity, or Eternally
Prior Oneness, with the Divine. “And”, Jesus is saying, “that Condition is
Realizable now, even under the rotten conditions here in Israel”—or at any other
time, and in any other place. Such Realization is a matter of Awakening in
Spiritual terms. In other words, instead of clinging to behavioral laws,
beliefs, rituals, expectations, and worldly inclinations, instead of depending
on the effects that you can create or that any “God”-idea can create in terms of
ordinary human possibility, cling to the Spiritual Divine—always presently.
Enter into the Spiritual Divine, and Realize the Spiritual Divine.

In the passage that I just quoted, Jesus of Galilee is clearly
communicating something about the Nature of the Divine. For Jesus, the Divine is
not the abstract “God of our fathers”, the “God” of rote belief in the temple.
For Jesus, the Divine Spiritual Condition of Reality is the Divine
Source-Condition (or “One True God”) of the fathers (or the ancestors)—not the
“God”-idea particular to any particular historical time, but the Ever-Living
Reality That Is Divine. The Living Divine Is the Spirit-Breath of Reality. The
Living Divine Pervades the world and all beings As the Spirit-Breath. Therefore,
Spirit-Breath Re-Union with the Living (or Inherently Spiritual) Divine Is the
“Kingdom of God”.

In another passage, Jesus of Galilee says that the “Kingdom of
God” is not outside you but within you—in other words, inherent in every moment
of existence. Thus, the “Kingdom of God” is inherent in this moment of
existence. The “Kingdom of God” is not to be sought by any strategic means, not
to be sought outside yourself, not to be conceived as “missing”, or “elsewhere”
in time and space.

The “Kingdom of God” is a Principle. The Spiritual Divine
Condition Is—Itself—the “Kingdom of God”. Thus, Jesus of Galilee is saying:
Abandon all conventional principles and cling to the Spiritual Divine—and, thus
and thereby, transcend all separation from the Divine Condition of Reality.

4.

In Jesus’ teaching, the Divine Law is stated in contrast to
the merely social (and political) laws. It is not a new social law that Jesus of
Galilee is teaching, but the Law, the Divine Law. He is recommending not the law
of love as opposed to the Mosaic law, but the Law of Spirit-birth.

Traditional Spirituality, even in its esoteric forms, is often
oriented to the way of works (or right actions), because works can include not
only social works but also works that are performed in private and that produce
results which could be regarded to be positive from a conventionally Spiritual
“point of view”. Mysticism, for instance, depends upon such action. In the Hindu
tradition, for example, forms of Yoga (such as Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja
Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, and Jnana Yoga) are traditionally conceived in these same
conventional terms—as actions that produce results. Thus, since the most ancient
days, all over the world, there has existed this tradition of action, the way of
works, the way of action as a kind of magical activity.

In the traditions of the way of works, action is conceived as
something that always produces results—and, therefore, it is recommended that
one perform only those actions that produce “good” results. In contrast to the
exoteric way (or “magical method”) of works (or causative action), however,
stands the esoteric way that has been indicated and pointed to by all the great
Spiritual Adepts. The great Spiritual Adepts are traditionally associated with
all kinds of lore about their origin, and many models of the universe were
reflected in the stories of how a great Spiritual Adept appears and how he or
she relates to the Divine Condition of Reality.

Structures of the universe—with
much “aboveness” and “belowness” and “middleness” and “planes”—have always been
part of the esoteric traditions. The great Spiritual Adepts are typically
presumed to have “come down” from the highest point in the scale of things into
this “lower” plane, to bring the esoteric teaching down from on high, and, thus,
into the middle and lower worlds.

Whatever the model of the universe in the context of which any
Spiritual Adept is conceived to arise in the human plane, the teaching of the
great Spiritual Adepts (whether historical or legendary) always speaks in
contrast to the conventional “wisdom” (or popular culture), and (therefore) in
contrast to the way of social morality for its own sake, or the conventional way
(or “magical method”) of action-leading-to-results.

Jesus of Galilee taught people about the all-embracing
principle of love as the right and essential motivation behind all social
laws—yet, ultimately (and more or less in secret), he was teaching people about
the Spiritual “Kingdom”, or Freedom through Spiritual Realization of the Divine
Condition (or Spirit-Breath) of Reality. The teaching of the “New Testament”
could be summarized as: “Repent from ‘sin’.” That is to say, understand and
renounce all forms of self-enacted separation from the Divine Condition of
Reality and be established in the “Kingdom of God”, or the Divine
Source-Condition That Is the Spiritual Divine. Renounce “sinful” (or ego-bound
and ego-binding) actions, let all actions be performed in surrender to the
Divine Condition of Reality, and (thus) fulfill the Law of Inherence in the
Spiritual Divine.

Religious law is conventionally (or exoterically) conceived in
terms of various rules and conventions of social morality. Thus, the “New
Testament” teaching has been interpreted and reduced to mean “Repent—or be sorry
for, and turn from—your ‘illegal’ and inappropriate social behaviors!” On a more
profound level, the “New Testament” summarizes all forms of social morality via
the primary law of love (or non-exclusiveness). Thus, the teaching of the “New
Testament” has also been interpreted to say “Repent of all acts that are not
based on love, and perform all kinds of acts of love, or self-sacrificial,
social, and relational action.”

In the religious fictions of the “New Testament” Gospels,
Jesus of Galilee is made to preach about the laws of social behavior, and he is
critical, even angrily critical, of the tradition of laws that were extant in
his time—systems of behavior that were so complex that an ordinary person could
not help but regard himself or herself to be a “sinner”. In the “New Testament”
Gospels, Jesus frequently criticizes the “pharisees”, who (along with all the
other religious “officials” of the time of Jesus) made the laws (or behavioral
principles) whereby one might enter the socially objectified “Kingdom of God”,
and who (the text supposes) made the laws so complicated that neither the
pharisees themselves nor the people they taught could ever “enter the Kingdom”.
Jesus was very much involved, apparently, in criticizing this over-complicated,
“fleshy” conception, this non-Spiritual conception, of the laws.

Jesus of Galilee summarized his idea of the moral law of
behavior many times. Sometimes, it is said, Jesus just pointed to the summaries
from the “Old Testament” tradition: “Love God with your entire being, and love
your neighbor as if your neighbor were not other than yourself.” In other words,
always surrender to the Divine—and do not be exclusively self-serving in your
social behaviors. Do not, in any negative (or non-Spiritual) sense, discriminate
the apparent individual “self” from any apparent “other”.

This more exoteric (or social-behavior) teaching of Jesus was
not a new teaching. This social teaching was already basic to the teaching
tradition of conventional Judaism. Jesus of Galilee simply emphasized this
teaching, in a social and cultural setting where the simplicity of that “point
of view” had, under the weight of the “official” religious and political
conditions of the times, been lost (or, at least, become very much diminished in
practice).

However, nothing like the esoteric moral teaching of Jesus of
Galilee was fundamental (or even, in general, known) to the “official” Judaism
of his time. Jesus’ esoteric version of the “moral law” is stated thus: “See
everyone in and as and by means of the Spirit-Breath. Relate self-sacrificially
(or in an ego-transcending manner) to others, and, altogether, live the life of
love that spontaneously emerges from a heart immersed in the Spiritual practice
of Breathing the Divine Spirit-Breath.”

Through such teaching, Jesus introduced
concepts from a broader cultural base—including Hellenistic and even Eastern
influences. That same esoteric teaching appears not only in the under-current of
the “New Testament”, but also in the communications of all the great Spiritual
Adepts throughout history. That esoteric teaching is about Divine Spiritual
Communion and always-present Freedom from unhappiness.

The rather exoteric moral teaching of Jesus of Galilee is of a
universal nature: “Be selfless—do not confine yourself to the commitment to
separate self, such that you are always acting to serve yourself.” Thus, Jesus
of Galilee can be understood to have been saying, “As action, be love.” That is
to say, do not act on the basis of the separate self and of
desire-for-the-results-of-action. Act selflessly, on the basis of the love of
the Divine, or commitment to the Divine, and to all beings in the Divine.

However, the esoteric (or Spiritual) teaching of Jesus of
Galilee is not about love as mere social morality, nor as a Yoga generated for
its own sake or for the sake of conventional results. The esoteric teaching of
Jesus was about the Spiritual Principle, which is, inevitably, also expressed as
love in the inevitable life of action. The esoteric teaching of Jesus was the
teaching of the “Kingdom of God” as a Spiritual Mystery, rather than the
conventional teaching of the “Kingdom of God” as a worldly change—and the
esoteric teaching of Jesus was not about the idea of “God” as a kind of powerful
warrior (or “War-God”) who is, eventually, to dominate the world, but, rather,
the “God” of Jesus is the Spirit-Breath That Liberates the heart by means of
psycho-physically-enacted Divine Communion.

Those who regarded Jesus of Galilee as a messiah-figure
expected him to be a political warrior. However, Jesus of Galilee specifically
criticized the exoteric expectations regarding the “Kingdom of God”, and he
worked to replace that exoteric understanding of the “Kingdom of God” and the
“messiah” and the Divine Itself with an esoteric (or truly Spiritual)
understanding. The esoteric teaching of Jesus is about the “Kingdom of God” as
the moment to moment event of being born (or Awakened) in and (thus) As the
Divine Spirit-Breath.

The teaching and disposition of Jesus of Galilee can be
summarized as follows: The Way is to Awaken in the Spiritual Divine—in each and
every moment. The Way is to Awaken not only in but (also) As the Spiritual
Divine—and (thus) to be Free and Happy.